"Playing Capcom games for story = Built to fail"

Every good game needs a follow-up but every fantastic game requires enough sequels to make you smother your friend’s face with a pillow and smash a window with a large machine to escape from the mental hospital to sweet freedom. The X Series has reached this high with flying colors.

After the whole plot of X5 is jammed down your throat in such a sadistic way that make Neo’s adventures in Matrix land look like an episode of Mr. Ed you are treated to the intro of the latest villain, Gate. From his choice of words Gate reassures us all that he is in fact insane and damn proud of it. Although Gate is the big cheese he prefers to stay inside and play D20 games and leave the guff to his Peon Isoc. Isoc has noted in his Palmpilot that the ghost of old man Zero(Known as The Nightmare) is haunting the earth to the extreme and needs to be purged post haste. Word. Isoc puts together a crack pot team of Nightmare Investigators to take Zero downtown but our Gumshoe X says “No, no, no” to this new groundbreaking idea and sets out to help Zero himself, stop the Investigators, and figure out if he is Alia’s type. Needless to say this is simply a filler plot that answers nothing and is made for you to buy X7 when it comes out. Thanks Capcom!

The game play is very similar to every other X game: “Side scrolling shoot um up of goodness” the only difference being that X starts with Zero’s sword and uses it with the power of a newbie. So X ain’t the master of the blade but he still can fall back on his “powerful power pilfering powers” but they still aren’t as cool as God’s rickshaw or even X1 weapons. The stages on the other hand are some of the hardest in the series and will change after going to other certain stages. In my coffee stained book hard things in general are a good thing when compared to the cakewalks Capcom has been blowing out. After the first stage you can also recruit an optional “Mysterious Hunter” to do X’s dirty work but if you actually read the manual like a homo sapiens you will know who it is.

The graphics aren’t anything new and are just recycled from X4/X5 but are still good unless you’re some wacky art freak who has a CG fetish. Despite what the Government religiously tells you I am not one of those persons.

Like all Mega man games and most Capcom games the music is great and would make any normal person or me want to party like it’s 1999. Although there are some oddballs out there that would brand this concerto as the work of the devil kindly ignore them and continue your day. The voice acting has been dubbed instead of subbed this time around and almost seems to work except that the programmers put in too much dead time in between every single sentence, for us with ADD this can be a big problem.

The challenge can keep Mega man fans coming back for more and more but if this style of play isn’t really your cup of tea you might find yourself trading it for something shiny…Like a sword!

If you don’t care about a good plausible plot and just want to play something fun for a change break into your local Funcoland and steal a copy today!